wGlossary

A

Analogue Voltage controlled as opposed to pulse controlled. Analogue
sound can more easily be used to accurately represent the original sound that
it recorded than digital can. The disadvantage is that analogue has more
imperfections in the sound.

Arpeggio A method used by synthesisers that did not have enough voices
to constantly have chords playing (like the SID which only had three voices).
Instead, it would rapidly play the notes in sequence by taking the instrument
and sliding it past the three notes rapidly. This effect is still used to
reproduce that sound.

Art Of Noise (Information needed)

AWE32/64 Basically an SB16 with wavetable synthesis built in

B

BPM Beats Per Minute

Buffer A buffer is used in many players to store extra music data in
case something slows down the computer. It can still read from the buffer
and play the music.

BUZZ Windows 9x Realtime Synthesis Tracker.

C

CDDA Compact Disc Digital Audio

CDQuality 44.1kHz, 16Bit, Stereo sound.

Centralise To centre a wave on the 0 mark.

Channel What notes are put on in a tracker. In earlier trackers, one
channel could only have one note at a time (one note would cut the other
off). By using NNAs, one note on a channel can ring out past another note on
the same channel.

Chip tune A module that is made to sound like an early computer music
synthesiser, usually sounding like the Commodore 64 (SID), or Game Boy sound
chips. However, this has come to mean any module that is small in size,
usually anywhere from 5 to 20kbytes.

Clipping When a sample is amplified up so that the peaks of the waveform
go past the maximum level allowed and gets flattened out.

Column A section of a channel. The first column is the notes column
which keeps track of the note (AG) and the octave (09). Between the note
and the octave, there is either a dash () or a number sign (#). The number
sign says that the note is sharp. The second column is the sample/instrument
column. This column says what sample or instrument number is used to play
the note. The third column is the volume column. This is the volume (in the
064 range) that the note is played at. In recent trackers, this can also be
used for limited effects. The fourth column is the effects column. This
starts with the number of the effect (for example, 3 is slidetonote) and
ends with a number which is how the effect will operate. 34A would mean that
the sound would slide into this note with a speed of 4A.

Cross fading This technique is used to fade out one sound while another
fades in (preferably at the same rate). The result is that one sound fades
into the next smoothly.

Cubic Player MOD player for DOS.

Cut off The point in which a filter starts to gradually cut frequencies
out of the sound that are above the point in a low pass filter.

D

D/L - Download. When you transfer a file from another computer connected
to yours.

DeliTracker Amiga based player

Digital A method in which messages are sent between electronic parts
using pulses of electricity instead of a constant flow which varies in
voltage (analogue). Digital sound is usually more pure than analogue but
does not reproduce the actual sound as accurately.

Digital Tracker (Information needed)

Digitrakker Coded by NFactor. Uses the MDL file format. Similar
capabilities to Fasttracker 2 but with a different interface.

DMF - XTracker module. Can be 32 channels

DSM - Dynamic Studio module

Duplicity Check A method of controlling NNAs. If one note encounters
another that matches the check criteria, it will take a different action than
usual such as fading it instead of cutting it.

Dynamic Studio (Information needed)

E

Eagle Player Module player for the Amiga. Supports a huge range of
formats and variations.

Envelope How a sound is controlled. Some envelopes are graphical and
have various nodes, or joints, that have lines drawn between them to show how
that aspect of the sound will behave. Some other envelopes are ADSR types.
This stands for Attack (how quickly the sound approaches), Decay (how quickly
the sound fades out), Sustain (how long the note is held before it falls),
and Release (how quickly the sound is released when it stops).

Equaliser, EQ Alters the sound so that some frequencies may be boosted
and others may be muffled, like more complex bass and treble settings.

F

FAR Farandole Composer module. Can be 16 channels with a maximum of 64
8Bit/16Bit Samples.

Farandole Composer Coded by Daniel Potter of Digital Infinity. Supports
GUS only and has a builtin sample editor. Edits 16 tracks, 64 instruments,
an own command set (does not claim to be PTcompliant), 8 and 16Bit sample
support, sample size up to 1 Meg. Features separate volume column and track
panning. Able to display all tracks on screen simultaneously by taking
advantage of SVGA 132x50 mode.

Fasttracker II Coded by Vogue and Mr. H of Triton. The first PC tracker
to introduce 32 channels and volume/panning envelopes. Has it's own built in
WAV writer, useful for producing audio CDs or for mixing samples for 4
channel MODs.

Filter Anything that throws out some and keeps some parts of a sound
like a sieve.

Flange An effect that is created when the same sound is played over
itself but one of the copies is offset very slightly. After the initial
offset (which is not required but is nice so the note isn't twice as loud at
the beginning), an extremely slight pitch bend will produce a "whoosh" sound.
This effect used to be done with reel to reel tape recorders by slowing down
one reel and then releasing it to let it catch up.

FLTx StarTrekker module.

Frequency The number of cycles a wave makes in a second, can also mean
the pitch in samples per second.

G

Gain How much the amplitude is increased by an amplifier.

Gated If a sound is gated, then it alternates between a high and low
volume very quickly.

GUS - Gravis Ultrasound. A hardware mixing sound card favoured by many in
the demo scene. Unfortunately, the GUS is not produced any more.

H

Hard Pan When a sound is Hard Panned Left, it will only come out of the
left speaker in a stereo system and vice versa for Hard Pan Right. Hard
Panning can be very painful to listen to with headphones.

Hardware mixing When a MOD is mixed by a sound card. Allows even slow
computers to play back high quality sound, due to the minimal CPU load. The
Paula chip in the Amiga does this.

Head Tracker (Information needed)

Hex A system of numbers that many trackers use so that higher numbers
may be fit into less digits. This system counts from 0 to 9 like the normal
system, but then counts from A to F before looping over to 10.

High Pass A filter used to cut out low frequencies and allow high
frequencies to 'pass' through.

HMI, HMP Human Machine Interfaces MIDI music files.

HSC FM synth music used by many old games, e.g.: FINTRIS, Rol Crusaders.

I

Inertia Player MOD Player for DOS. (Information needed)

Instrument An instrument is the data used to affect the playback of a
sample without the need for an effect. In the original trackers, the
instrument information was the sample volume, fine tune, and loop, and it was
held within a module. The sample could only be saved as a sample and it
would lose volume and fine tune information (I think samples with loop
information would retain this when saved, am I right?).
Now, with the more advanced trackers, an instrument consists of one or
more samples with things like volume envelopes, panning and vibrato all
included. These instruments can be saved and they retain all of their
original information.

Interpolation A technique used to make sound smoother and take out the
high pitched ringing sound that occurs when a sample is played below the
sampling rate by drawing straight lines through the points instead of
"stepping" through the sample. Some interpolation draws curves instead,
giving clearer sound.

IMHO All modem users should know this one, which originates from the
dawn of modems. IMHO stands for In My Honest/Humble Opinion.

Impulse Tracker Coded by Jeffrey Lim a.k.a. Pulse. Current version is
2.14p4. Impulse Tracker is no longer being updated, due to the piracy that
happened when the stereo WAV writer was released. Patch 4 of Impulse Tracker
includes a Direct X driver – for those sound cards not directly supported.
The Direct X driver also allows for supported PCI sound cards to be used
without needing extra software or hardware.

IT Impulse Tracker module.

ITI Impulse Tracker instrument. (Actually these can have any extension
or none at all, but the manual refers to them this way, I think it might be
something to do with the file header.... hang on a moment... nope! The
header uses IMPI).

ITS Impulse Tracker Sample. See ITI, except the header uses IMPS.

IFF Interchange File Format. A very flexible format generally used on
the Amiga. Sound samples are generally stored as a subset of IFF called
8SVX. 8SVX can only store 8bit mono samples – it can hold the sample rate
but very few programs that can save 8SVX samples actually do this.

J

K

L

LFO, Low Frequency Oscillator An oscillator that puts out a frequency so
low that it is inaudible. This is usually used like an envelope. A neat
experiment if you have your computer hooked up to speakers is to take a sine
bass, keep playing it lower and lower until you can't hear it, then turn up
the volume and the bass (with a boost perhaps) on your stereo. Take the
cover off your speaker and watch it move. Be careful not to blow out your
speaker!

Linear Slides A method of calculating pitch slides used in recent module
formats that are constant from one sample/speed/pitch to the next.

Loop back Point A point in the pattern that the player will go back to
when a loop back command for that point is executed.

Lossy Compression A compression technique that sacrifices sound quality
to make the file smaller.

Low Pass A filter that cuts out high frequencies and allows low
frequencies to 'pass' through.

M

M.K. ProTracker/Noisetracker module. M.K. are the initials of the
programmers Mahoney and Kaktus.

MacMikMod (Information needed)

MacModPro (Information needed)

MadTracker 2 Coded by MadHouse. MT2 was designed with the aim of
reducing the gap between trackers and "professional" music programs. MT2
introduced some new features, and brought old ones up to date – drum
patterns, proper mixer, stereo samples (yes!) and real time effects (delay,
filters, flange). Runs under Windows 9x/NT. MT2 is fully functional
shareware, with the standard registration giving a personalised key that
saves your name etc into the module. Professional registration also includes
a WAV writer, and any new pro features that get introduced.

MDS MIDI music used by MageSlayer game.

MED Music Editor or OctaMED module, can be 64 channel with full panning.

Meditor EPSILON TR3 (Information needed)

MegaTracker (Information needed)

Midas Player (Information needed)

MikMod (Information needed)

MMD0 OctaMED module

MMD1 OctaMED module

MMD2 OctaMED v5+ Module

MMD3 OctaMED SoundStudio Module

MOD Possibly the most diverse module format around. Just because a file
has "MOD" on the end doesn't automatically mean that the file is a four
channel 15/31 instruments module... oh no! There are many different forms of
MOD around; Fasttracker MODs for example can have more than 4 channels.

Mod4Win A MOD player for Windows 3.1 upwards. Very popular due to it's
compatibility and features.

ModEdit (current version reported to be v3.01) Coded by Norman Lin.
Supports SB, DAC and the internal speaker using Mark J. Cox's playing routine
(it runs even on 286 PC's). Only edits the M.K. format. Mousedriven menu
interface. This editor's main quality is its sortofmusical notation.
Whereas almost all other trackers display the tracks vertically and notes are
only discernible by their key character, ModEdit displays the current pattern
horizontally and the notes on a vertical spread. This editor is old but
could suit some people to get started on. It has a very good documentation,
which can unfortunately be a bit misleading at times, however.

ModPlug A range of module programs by Olivier Lapicque. Mod PlugIn is
a plugin for browsers so you can listen to MODs embedded in a web page.
ModPlug Player is the most feature packed MOD player for Windows 9x/NT. It
also has the best sound quality of any player yet. ModPlug Tracker is a
Windows 9x/NT tracker.

Modulation Changing an aspect of one sound using the data of another
one.

MT2 MadTracker 2 Module

MTI MadTracker 2 Instrument

MTM MultiTracker Module

Multichannel Mode A mode where when a note is entered in a channel that
has multichannel mode on, it will enter it and then skip to the next channel
with the mode on.

O

OctaMED 8 channel tracker for the Amiga with very good MIDI support.
Coded by Teijo Kinnunen

OKT Oktalyzer Module, can be up to 8 channels with 255 7/8Bit
instruments.

Oktalyzer (Information needed)

Oscillator A device that produces a sound by vibration.

Oscilloscope A device that shows visually what waveforms look like.

Order The list that controls the order in which the patterns of a module
will be played.

P

Panbrello Pans the sound around like vibrato.

Panning Panning refers to the volume at which a sound is played out of
two separate speakers. If the sound coming out of one speaker is louder than
the other then the sound will seem to be closer to that speaker.

Pan Swing A setting that makes the sound pan around from note to note.

Pattern Every MOD is split up into a number of patterns. A standard
ProTracker MOD can only have 64 rows per pattern.

Paula The sound chip that started it all off, allows 4 mono or two
stereo channels to be played back in 8Bit at a maximum of 30kHz.

Physical Channels The number of channels used in a module without
accounting for extra channels used for fades by NNAs.

PitchPan Separation This will change the panning position depending on
the pitch. The PitchPan centre is the note where the instrument will be
played in the middle. To either side, the notes will be panned by an amount
depending on the pitchpan separation value.

PlayerPro Mac tracker. Current version is 4.5.9

Polytracker (Information needed)

Portamento Pitch bending/sliding.

Primary Tempo In a MOD, the primary tempo is the one that can be set
in BPM, usually between 31 and 255.

Pulse Wave Kind of like a square wave, except not so even in the time
periods. __|"|___|"|___

Q

Quantisize, quantisization Refers to the accuracy of the timing of notes
when they are recorded in real time. In a MIDI sequencer notes can be
quantisized to a very accurate level, in a tracker, the faster the overall
speed the more accurate realtime input will be.

R

Real Tracker A DOS based tracker which can use two effects columns (not
just an effect column and a volume column). Graphical Windows like interface
which can go up to 1280x1024. Current version is 2.23

Ripped, ripper, ripping A ripped sample is one taken from a module,
game, demo, or application, generally done without the authors permission. A
ripper is a program that rips samples (and/or other data) out of module,
game, demo, or application.
Ripping refers to the process by which data is ripped, either by hand or by
using a ripper. The ethics of ripping have been discussed over the years,
and it is generally agreed that if you rip something out of someone else’s
work, you should also allow others to rip things from your work. You should
also credit the person you ripped the data from by mentioning their name in
your file. Usually ripping is only done on noncommercial files like modules
and demos, due to the legalities involved if the data you rip is copyrighted.

Row A single line of a pattern

RTI Real Tracker instrument

RTM Real Tracker module

RTS Real Tracker sample

S

Sample A digital image of an analogue sound. Samples can be looped and
played back at different pitches. A sample can also be one amplitude
measurement in a digital recording.

Sampling Rate The time interval which specifies how often amplitude
measurements (samples) of a source are taken at in a digital recording. A
digital recording will not accurately measure frequencies above half of the
sampling rate. The higher the rate, the more real the sound sounds.

Saw Wave A waveform that zigzags, rising slowly and then dropping
quickly. /|/|/|/|

SB SoundBlaster. Most PC trackers can use one of these. A standard
SoundBlaster can only play back 8Bit mono sound, at a maximum frequency of
22050 Hz. There are ranges of SoundBlaster versions, from 1.0 to 2.0.

SB Pro SoundBlaster Pro. The next step up from the original allows 8
Bit sound at a maximum frequency of 44100 Hz in mono, and 22050 Hz stereo.

SB16 SoundBlaster 16. The next step after the SB Pro allows 16Bit mono
or stereo sound at a maximum frequency of 44100 Hz.

SB32 SoundBlaster 32. The first SoundBlaster card to have onboard
memory.

Secondary Tempo This is pretty complex. The Secondary Tempo controls
the number of ticks per row. The less ticks, the faster the BPM. But not in
all trackers. If you use OctaMED and you set the Primary Tempo to SPD not
BPM, it seems to work the other way around! The more ticks the faster the
BPM why is this?

Scream Tracker 3 A hybrid tracker that can use both samples and FM
synthesised sounds (it can only use a SB for FM). Scream Tracker 3 was the
first tracker to use both FM and digital sounds together. Current version is
3.21.

Sine Wave A waveform that curves smoothly and evenly in an Sshape.

Sinusoidal Having to do with sine waves.

Software mixing When all the mixing of the MOD is done via software
before being passed to the sound card for playing.

Song (No I'm not mad!). A song in tracker terms refers to a module that
doesn't contain any samples. Songs originated back when disk space was
limited. They allow a composer to track and save modules which will
automatically load the samples when needed. The earliest trackers worked
only with songs, and you had to collect the various sample disks in order to
play them back correctly.

Sound Tracker The first tracker. Only had 5 effect commands and came
with two disks of samples! Strange as it may seem, this was a commercial
program marketed by Electronic Arts. It was coded by Karsten Obarski and
released in 1987.

Sound Tracker Pro 2 The second version of Sound Tracker, released in
1996. Has a similar interface, but can only save MODs in its own proprietary
format, which is completely incompatible with the old one.

SoundStudio Basically a "professional" version of OctaMED, coded by
Teijo Kinnunen, which allows up to 64 channels, panning, an effect command
for playing a sample backwards, plus a WAV writer. Originally released for
the Amiga, SoundStudio is currently being ported to the PC. One cool feature
that SoundStudio allows over practically all other trackers is its ability to
use stereo samples.

Square Wave A waveform that jumps sharply but evenly from one extreme
value to the next. |_|"|_|"|.

StarTrekker Amiga based tracker. Supports 8 channels

STM Scream Tracker module

Stone Tracker (Information needed)

S3I Scream Tracker 3 instrument

S3M Scream Tracker 3 module

Symphonie (Information needed)

T

Tempo The speed, at which a tune is played, measured in BPM.

Tremolo Like vibrato, but for volume.

Triangle Wave A waveform that zigzags, like a sine wave but with only
straight lines. /\/\/\/\

U

U/L Upload. When you transfer a file to another computer connected to
yours.

UT United Trackers. An organisation formed to try and bring the
tracking scene together.

V

Vangelis Tracker (Information needed)

Velvet Studio DOS based tracker with a lot of features. Graphical
interface. Current version is 2.01

Vibrato The modulation of the pitch of a sample with a certain depth and
speed controlled by a certain waveform (LFO) that increases from 0 at a
certain rate.

ViperMAX A GUS clone. Not in production any more.

Virtual Channels Channels that are created but not shown on the editor
to play more than one note simultaneously on the same physical channel.

Volume Ramping A technique used by some players to take out clicks by
sliding the volume of a note down very quickly (at a high rate too so it
doesn't cause further clicking) instead of just cutting them.

W

WOW Grave Composer module

WSS Windows Sound System, allows 64kHz 16Bit Stereo audio. A lot of
cheaper sound cards will allow SB Pro and WSS compatibility. Unfortunately,
there are very few DOS trackers that support it. So anyone with one of these
cards who uses a nonWSS tracker is stuck with 8Bit 22.05kHz Stereo, 44.1kHz
Mono SoundBlaster Pro.

X

XTracker Written by DLUSiON. Text mode interface similar to Borland’s
Turbo range of development products – uses windows and mouse. Shareware

xCHN Fasttracker 1 Module

XI Fasttracker II instrument

XM eXtended Module Fasttracker II module

XMI The Miles eXtended MIDI, used by Miles sound system.

XP eXtended Pattern Fasttracker II pattern

XT eXtended Track Fasttracker II track

Y

Z

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

669 Module format used by a variety of early PC trackers. Can be 8
channel.